For years, residents at New Oxford Manor mobile home park have complained of water quality issues and rising rents and a lack of communication from park ownership.
Dan Rainville, The Evening Sun

Some New Oxford Manor residents remain suspicious of their water and the park owners, who they say have been difficult to contact.

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For years, Connie Toney and her neighbors have complained of water quality issues and poor communication from the owners of New Oxford Manor, where she lives in a mobile home. In 2016, residents were issued eight boil-water notices spanning a total of 81 days as pipe repairs were being made. Toney's monthly lot rent has increased 50 percent in the past four years, rising from $300 to $450.(Photo: Dan Rainville, The Evening Sun)Buy Photo

After five years at New Oxford Manor mobile home park, Connie Toney will not use her tap water. She boils her pots and pans before cooking dinner, which she serves only on disposable paper plates. She does not believe the water is safe.

Toney’s parents bought the home for her in 2012, when she was getting out of a bad relationship and needed a secure place to begin a new life with her kids. The mobile home, located along Route 30 in Mount Pleasant Township in the southeastern corner of Adams County, has a small porch and a parking pad with room for two cars. She owns the house, and, typical for those who live in mobile home parks, rents the lot on which it sits.

Two weeks after she moved in, she received notice that her rent was going up $25 a month to $325. She slid the notice into a black and white folder.

For Toney and the other families who live in New Oxford Manor, the years since have brought more rent increases, water system problems, boil-water notices, and a message from the company: You are causing the problems, and we’re going to charge you to fix them.

Officials who own the park say Pennsylvania laws that require them to issue boil-water notices every time repairs are made are unnecessary and foster distrust among residents. The water, they say, is safe and the problems have since been fixed.

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Residents have criticized Carlyle Group, the owners of New Oxford Manor mobile home park, for water quality issues, including boil-water notices. Joseph Weber, Carlyle Group’s chief operating officer, said the company spent more than $250,000 on repairs to New Oxford Manor, including drilling new wells to increase the source supply and adding a new water storage unit to the park.(Photo: Dan Rainville, The Evening Sun)

Indeed, some residents remain suspicious of the water and the park owners, who they say have been difficult to contact. The residents have also discovered they have limited leverage under Pennsylvania law, which appears to give park owners the upper hand in disputes.

These days, Toney's folder is fat with 49 pages, including memos stating the water was at times unsafe to use unless boiled first, a water quality report mentioning violations issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and several notices of rent and fee increases to offset the park owner’s cost of water system repairs.

Some neighbors have left. Others, such as Toney, are archiving each notice they get from New Oxford Manor, but they're less sure than ever that it will do any good.

'These are not minor complaints'

Toney says she tried calling the company to discuss her complaints directly, but with little success.

“They never answer, and they never call you back,” she said. “I must have had five calls there. Nobody ever called.”

Most interactions with her landlord have been on paper.

In 2014, Toney received nine boil-water notices in her mail. In 2015, she slipped four more boil-water notices and a DEP violation notice into her folder. The next year brought another eight boil notices, leaving residents without usable water for a total of 81 days as park owners repaired the system.

In June 2016, park officials sent memos to the approximately 285 residents stating their rents would increase by $50 a month, the highest hike since The Carlyle Group Inc., a California-based real estate investment firm, bought the park in 2006.

That increase, the memo told residents, was to offset the water problems. The park owns and operates its own water system, using several wells on the property. In four years, Toney's rent has gone from $300 to $450 a month.

Residents say they think the water problem is caused by aging pipes in the ground — not high water usage as the company claims. Still, Carlyle officials installed individual meters at each home in the park, a move they said helped halve the average daily water consumption in each home.

Some residents boycotted the rent hike, demanding the water repairs be finished once and for all. And they asked the state Attorney General's bureau of consumer protection to intervene.

In response to residents' complaints, Carlyle hired a certified water operator to investigate the water issues. In a report, provided to The Evening Sun by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the operator told the state he could not find a cause but echoed residents’ suspicions that a leak was to blame.

Around the same time, the state DEP was looking into the situation, and the park manager told the state that residents were using too much water and that's what was causing the problems.

The bureau of consumer protection started asking questions about the water, and, in July 2016, Carlyle Group’s chief operating officer, Joseph Weber, wrote them a letter stating the park’s water quality was fine.

“This notice is required even though there is no issue with the quality of water being delivered to the residents,” the letter states. “We report regularly to the State and have no issue with the quality of water.”

In August, neighbors began organizing, calling the Carlyle Group’s California offices to complain, and gathering petitions to submit to the park management. The Carlyle Group Inc. owns more than 30 mobile home parks around the country. It is not affiliated with The Carlyle Group L.P., one of the world's largest investment firms.

Len Yorty collected about 200 signatures on a petition to protest the water issues and rent increase.

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Len Yorty, a 14-year resident of New Oxford Manor, spreads out papers related to The Carlyle Group Inc. on his kitchen table. Carlyle, which is based in California and is not affiliated with well-known investment firm The Carlyle Group L.P., owns more than 30 mobile home parks around the country and bought New Oxford Manor 11 years ago.(Photo: Dan Rainville, The Evening Sun)

“This is a major health and safety concern," Yorty wrote in the petition. "These are not minor complaints to be ignored.”

He sent the document to park management, but never got a direct response, he said. Later in August 2016, park management held a community meeting to explain the water issues to residents. Yorty left the meeting unsatisfied with what he was told — that high water usage by himself and neighbors was to blame.

Months later, Yorty and Toney, who refused to pay the rent increase, found notices in their mailboxes stating they were charged a $1,000 fee for withholding payments.

“You have these troubles, and you get scared,” Toney said. “That $1,000, there’s no way I could come up with that. I thought I could lose everything.”

Toney negotiated the fee down to $450, which she has been paying in monthly installments.

Also of interest: An Evening Sun series about lead in public drinking water:

Park owners worry over distrust

While all of this was happening, Carlyle Group was working with the Pennsylvania DEP to investigate the problems. They determined the park's wells did not produce enough water to supply the park, which can wreak havoc on the quality of water delivered to residents.

The company spent more than $250,000 on repairs to New Oxford Manor, Weber said in an email Wednesday.

The problems were fixed in 2016 when the company drilled new wells to increase the source supply and added a new water storage unit to the park, Carlyle's environmental director Matthew Raynor said in November.

Weber was baffled to hear that, more than a year after the community meeting, residents still distrust the quality of their water.

"I was hoping we had arrived at the other side but if we still have some communication to do, we'll be working on that," Weber said Monday.

As for the rent increases, it's not uncommon for a utility to transfer the cost of repairs to the customer, especially when a system needs substantial repairs, Weber said.

Neither Weber nor Raynor were aware that residents were still afraid to use their water and had been trying to reach the company, they said this month.

Park management is responsible for posting and distributing the company's contact information to residents. But Carlyle has had difficulty finding the right management team for the park and has had a number of managers over the last few years, Weber said.

Phone numbers for the manager's office and for emergencies that occur outside of office hours are posted around the park, but the corporate number is not, he said.

An outdated but still active phone number is listed for the company online.

"It is a working number, but not one that has been monitored for years," Weber said, adding that the company plans to address the confusion over contact information.

“We're trying to achieve a community where they feel safe and comfortable”

Carlyle Group COO Joseph Weber

Weber reiterated that residents should rely on the oversight of the state of Pennsylvania to ensure the water quality is adequate and sufficient.

"We're trying to achieve a community where they feel safe and comfortable," he said.

New Oxford Manor eventually negotiated and signed an agreement with the state in June 2016 that included a $9,000 penalty and required the park to make several changes to the water system to get back in compliance with the law, DEP officials said.

During the DEP's inspection in April, no operation and maintenance plan was found, the emergency response plan had not been updated since 2011 and no sanitary seal cap was found on one of the park's wells. None of these items required a notice of violation for residents as there were no health-based impacts, according to a department spokesperson.

Still, in mid-October, several residents said the water was shut off. Several said they received no notice before it happened. Raynor said this was for spot treatment to a few areas of pipes.

Raynor wishes there was some way to increase residents' feelings of security in their water, but he said he was not sure how.

"We had a lot of good questions," Raynor said of the community meeting in August 2016. "I don't know what we can do other than stand out there and answer every question they have. We tried to promote as much knowledge as we could and give good concise answers. But some people don't want the answers, they just want the problems to not appear anymore."

Raynor said Pennsylvania's law requiring boil-water notices fosters distrust between residents and their utilities. When he read the law more than two years ago, he said he knew it would erode trust from the public.

"Eventually you're going to have one or two reactions," he said. "You'll be so incredibly untrusting that you're going to be Chicken Little, or you won't take the directions on the boil notice and get sick."

Also of interest: How does lead get into your water? Story continues after video.

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Water typically leaves a treatment plant lead free. It's on its way to your home that lead gets into your water.
Sean Heisey

Residents have trouble leaving

When Toney moved into the park, she signed an agreement with Carlyle that if she wanted to move away, her only option would be to sell the home.

That’s unusual for mobile home parks, but not unheard of. Residents own these homes, but have little or no control over the land beneath them. Mobile homes also tend to depreciate in value over time, much like a car.

So when a dispute arises with the park owners, residents might feel they have to choose between coping with a bad living arrangement or trying to sell their home at a loss.

Yorty feels Carlyle Group doesn’t care about residents, but he can’t afford to abandon his three-bedroom, two-bathroom mobile home.

“You can’t sell these things,” he said. “This one is 17 years old. It’s not in bad shape and fairly clean. But nobody wants it.”

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One of several vacant mobile homes at New Oxford Manor. A note on the window states "No trespassing - the locks on this property have been changed in accordance with the law." In Pennsylvania, park owners have several options for handling a tenant who breaks the rules laid out in the lease they sign: eviction or seeking a sheriff’s sale. If a tenant is evicted, a park can also file for an abandonment order, which allows the park to take ownership of a vacant home.(Photo: Dan Rainville, The Evening Sun)

For residents who stay put and ride out problems, there are few options to remedy disputes. Yorty collected signatures from his neighbors, handed out copies of complaint forms and contacted his state representative for help, but nothing came of his efforts.

“I almost took my hot water heater and threw it on the office porch to be done with it,” Yorty said.

Under Pennsylvania's Mobile Home Park Rights Act, residents can file a complaint with the Attorney General's bureau of consumer protection or with a local district attorney.

Under the same law, Yorty and other New Oxford residents have discovered, park owners have several options for handling a tenant who breaks the rules laid out in the lease they sign: eviction or seeking a sheriff’s sale. If a tenant is evicted, a park can also file for an abandonment order, which allows the park to take ownership of a vacant home.

Several New Oxford Manor residents filled out complaints in 2016 for the bureau of consumer protection. They said that water was often unusable, that they were being incorrectly blamed for the problem, and that they were being charged higher rents to pay for the fixes.

The bureau wrote back to one resident that it had investigated complaints, but said the rent increases did not warrant further attention from the Attorney General's office. The water issues were deferred to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Residents discovered that park owners can raise the rent once in a 12-month period with no restriction as to how much.

Around the same time residents filed complaints with the state, the group also spoke with a private attorney about legal options for addressing the water problems. But they could not afford the retainer fees.

Since then, Toney's neighbor Pat Jacob said he’s watched the neighborhood slowly empty. He stood on his front porch in October and pointed to several homes with no one in them. Some were kicked out of the park for not paying rent, and others left out of frustration, he said.

Owning the land could solve residents' problems

While some experts say the best mobile home parks are resident-owned, Jacob doesn't think he could get enough of his neighbors on the same page to buy the park.

Housing advocates agree the best solution to help mobile home residents gain autonomy over their living circumstances is to buy the park outright and form a homeowners association. However, a national trend of investors purchasing whole parks has driven the prices into the millions of dollars, leaving the low-income residents with an even larger financial mountain to scale.

Doug Ryan, a fair housing advocate with the nonprofit Prosperity Now, said the biggest threat to mobile home park residents is that they don't own the land their home sits on.

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A damaged street sign lies on the ground at New Oxford Manor mobile home park. Experts say that the best mobile home parks are resident-owned, but a national trend of investors buying mobile home parks has pushed the prices into the millions of dollars.(Photo: Dan Rainville, The Evening Sun)

So his organization is looking to change that. They helped found ROC USA, which helps communities form limited equity partnerships to purchase their parks. The organization works in 14 states, though not Pennsylvania.

"If you have control of the land beneath the homes, you have control of the future," Ryan said. "It can't be sold from underneath you or rezoned for another use. It's so fundamental to the security and asset building of the community of homes."

Mobile Home University, a website for investors, teaches people more about the industry and the advantages of purchasing a park as a financial endeavor.

"Mobile home parks offer higher greater returns and stability than any other real estate sector," co-founder Frank Rolfe states on the website. "They are the only real estate segment that grows stronger as the economy weakens."

Investors see the residents, who don’t move often, as a key to a steady, safe venture. Companies like Carlyle Group are making substantial offers to mom-and-pop park owners.

In Adams County, mobile home parks such as Walnut Grove, Cavalry Heights and Mountainview have sold in recent years for $1.35 million, $1.47 million and $2.2 million, respectively.

"They can close a deal way faster than a resident group could organize legally and put together financing," Ryan said.

Generally speaking, residents who don’t leave problematic parks, or can’t, have to hope that their park isn't sold to a negligent park owner.

Pennsylvania mobile home residents have few protections, said State Rep. Dan Moul (R-Conewago), who co-owns his own mobile home park in Adams County.

“Do I want more government sticking their nose in people’s business? No, but people do deserve to be treated right," Moul said.

About half of the residents in his park are on low or fixed incomes and cannot afford to move. From time to time, Moul gets astronomical offers on his own park from large companies located in other states.

“There are investment companies nationwide that buy mobile home parks that realize they got a captured audience, so to speak,” he said.

Reach reporter Lillian Reed at 717-634-3084.

Park owners risk being 'held hostage'

Advocates for mobile home park owners say that abandoned homes are a big problem for park owners, whose land is essentially held hostage.

The PA manufactured Housing Association, a trade organization that supports the manufactured housing industry, helped pen Pennsylvania’s Act 156, which helps park owners take ownership of and resell abandoned mobile homes to help offset lost rents, said Mary Gaiski, an association representative.

Abandoned homes were becoming an increasing problem after the housing market crash in 2008. One park in York County had as many as 15 abandoned homes at the time Act 156 was passed, Gaiski said.

The law was necessary to protect park owners, who in some cases were unable to sell the abandoned homes in sheriff’s sale and were penalized for moving the homes off of their property, she said. Still, sometimes residents can find a powerful advocate to create change in legislation surrounding mobile home parks.

In 2006, about 50 families discovered they had to move their homes from the Barbosa Mobile Home Park in Northampton County within a matter of weeks, Lehighvalleylive reported in 2012. The park was purchased by a new owner who wanted to raze the park and build condos.

State Rep. Robert Freeman started working on a bill as a result of the Barbosa park situation, which eventually passed in 2012, that now requires manufactured home community owners to give residents 60 days notice, not 30, and to help pay relocation expenses.

Moul says he has tried and failed to bring about legislation that would regulate the way mobile home owners are taxed, in hopes of easing their financial burden.